Hitler, Racecars, and the Perils of Controversy

By Peter Nevland - Jul 07 , 2009

If you want to get attention the quickest way possible, you might want to try some shock value. It worked for Salman Rushdie with The Satanic Verses, and it seems to be working pretty well for Paris Hilton, so maybe it can get your career off the ground, as well.

As with any quick and easy doorway to fame, danger awaits every step along this path. I haven’t done research on the actual percentages, but I’d wager that it destroys a much greater number of reputations than it builds. Someone should have told Bernie Ecclestone, the Formula 1 chief who managed to land a tasty headline in London’s The Times on July 4th saying, “Hitler? He got things done”  He sure did, Bernie. He did a lot of bad things. Now explain yourself.

“In a lot of ways, terrible to say this I suppose, but apart from the fact that Hitler got taken away and persuaded to do things that I have no idea whether he wanted to do or not, he was in the way that he could command a lot of people, able to get things done.”

Huh? Are you serious, Bernie? So let’s just gloss over the first part of the sentence where you don’t know whether Hitler wanted to kill millions of Jews, Gypsies, Poles, Russians and just about everyone else in Europe and say that you think that dictators have a much easier time accomplishing things than leaders of democracies. Have I got you right, Bernie?

“The trouble with politicians and democracy is they all the time have to compromise, they can’t do what they want to do because there is somebody in opposition. It certainly takes a lot longer to do something,” Ecclestone said two days later in a followup interview with the Associated Press. “Between ‘32 and ‘38 he [Hitler] took a country that was bankrupt and made it a reasonably strong power in Europe, but after that the guy obviously is a lunatic.”

Well, that sounds a little better than the first quote, but it’s still pretty disturbing. Germany violated all sorts of international law, suppressed human rights, and started their concentration camps during the 30’s. If you want to vent about not having absolute dictatorial power to enact the changes you think would be good for race car driving, that’s one thing, but using Hitler as your example is a bit dicey. What were you thinking, Bernie? “I regret that it didn’t come out like that, upsetting people is the last thing I wanted to do, obviously.”

The offended outcry against him has been fervent and worldwide. Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, must agree with Ecclestone’s love of dictatorships, saying that, “Someone with Ecclestone’s views should not be allowed to run such an important and popular racing series.” Yes, and if I were king, everyone who’s ever made a joke about redheads would be thrown in the pit of poopy diapers.

Let’s agree that Bernie Ecclestone doesn’t choose his words well when explaining himself and probably isn’t the best resource for historical details or political opinions. He failed in his attempts to handle the nitroglycerin power of controversy and will suffer the consequences for his comments in terms of lost advertising revenue and ticket sales. As a “spokesman for the Board of Deputies of British Jews said: ‘Mr Ecclestone’s comments regarding Hitler, female, black and Jewish racing drivers, and dictatorships are quite bizarre. He says [in the interview], ‘Politics is not for me’, and we are inclined to agree.’”

If you really want to find some fault, let’s look at the writers of the story—Steve Bird, Ruth Gledhill, and Sam Coates—who could have started the story with Ecclestone’s concern at the racist taunts and insults some fans have directed at Formula One’s only black driver, Lewis Hamilton (he’s British, so it makes no sense for me to call him African American, and African British sounds weird). They could have written about Ecclestone’s condemnation of the Iraq war based on how we “move into countries and we have no idea of the culture.” Instead, they chose the headline that would be the most shocking and get the most attention. They got away with it. Bernie Ecclestone wasn’t so lucky.

A friend of mine has this same problem. He likes to be shocking and a little bit on the edge, without realizing that not everyone will find humor or a deep connection in what he writes or says the same way he does. Recently he wrote an article on his Facebook with the phrase, “nigger-rigged” in the title to describe how far away Christianity has gotten from really accepting everyone. He never explained in his otherwise well-written and passionate piece why he used such a misbegotten phrase. Most everyone wrote him harsh comments in reply, completely ignoring the rest of his essay. I personally know that he’s not anywhere close to a racist, but he definitely suffered from poor judgment when choosing his title.

If you do find yourself dreaming about the immense book sales or popularity you could generate with a trip down the shock value road, here are the only ways I see to survive:

1. Recognize the fact that your title or statement will be controversial and explain it immediately. If you can, run it by someone else to see if they think you’ve acquitted yourself adequately. Controversy may draw a crowd, but if you don’t get that crowd on your side, they’ll tear you apart.

2. Write about someone else who’s controversial and get them in trouble. It worked for the authors of the article about Bernie Ecclestone, and David Frost and many others launched entire careers on the strength of their involvement in taking down Richard Nixon. It’s called being a journalist.

3. Be comfortable with being perceived as an idiot and laughed at for any opinions you have. Paris Hilton, meet your new friend, Bernie Ecclestone.

4. Have some actual substance, talent, and hard work to support your controversial stand and don’t back down. Salman Rushdie’s first book went largely unnoticed, and it was 6 years before he released his second novel, the prizewinning, international bestseller, Midnight’s Children. After 8 more years and a couple other books, he released The Satanic Verses. He’s since been knighted and received a multitude of other literary honors for his writing and his 10 years living in hiding from the fatwah issued against him by the Ayatollah Khomeini and the rest of the Muslim world.

Now go write something interesting, take responsibility for what you say, and don’t be too quick to judge every shocking thing you read.